The weeks following my "spar" with Damian were a study in quiet, relentless pressure. The dynamic of the family had shifted on its axis. Damian, having assessed my potential, now treated me not as a nuisance, but as a long-term project. He didn't offer praise—that wasn't the Ashworth way—but his presence at the training yard became more frequent.
He'd watch my drills from a distance, and occasionally, after a session, he'd offer a sharp, insightful critique that would cut to the core of my technique. "Your footing was unstable on that last turn. The rhythm is useless if your anchor is weak." Each piece of advice was a rare gem, and I absorbed it hungrily.
Elias, on the other hand, had retreated into a shell of sullen resentment. My brief, humiliating defeat at Damian's hands had perversely made things worse for him. I had lost, but I had earned the heir's respect, a subtle validation that Elias, for all his higher power, had never truly received. He avoided me, his glares a constant, simmering presence at the dinner table, a silent promise of future conflict.
But it was the presence of Lord Valerius that truly wore on my soul. He was a ghost at every feast, a smiling viper in every council meeting. He was more friendly than ever, a perfect portrait of the proud family friend. He would clap me on the shoulder, praise my progress with his warm, fatherly voice, and ask insightful questions about my training. "That new technique of yours, Lancelot," he'd said one evening over wine, "it seems to resonate in a way I've never seen. Truly a unique Path you are forging."
Each word from him was like a drop of poison in my ear. I had to smile back, to play the part of the grateful, up-and-coming son, while every instinct in my body, supercharged by my draconic senses, screamed that I was in the presence of a predator. The weight of the secret, of knowing the man who held my father's complete trust was a fanatic dedicated to our destruction, was a constant, grinding pressure on my mind.
This pressure became the crucible for my growth. I threw myself into my training with a desperate, single-minded focus. Damian's advice had been a revelation: "Your fuel tank is the size of a teacup." He was right. My Path was sophisticated, but my Aether reserves were pathetic for an Adept. I needed a deeper well to draw from.
So, I followed his prescription. Every single day, from the moment I woke to the moment I collapsed into bed, I maintained the Two-Heart Cadence. It became the rhythm of my life. I breathed with it, walked with it, ate with it. I spent hours in deep meditation, not trying to manifest any power, but simply circulating my mana in the rhythmic loop, pushing against the edges of my capacity, stretching my circuits, and encouraging my Dragon Heart to deepen its connection to my body.
It was grueling, monotonous, and utterly exhausting. But slowly, I started to feel a change. The river of mana within me, once a shallow, quick-running stream, began to deepen into a steady, powerful current. The channels in my body, once fragile and thin, grew stronger, more pliable, capable of handling a greater flow without strain. I was building my foundation, brick by painstaking brick.
The breaking point came, as it often does, not in a moment of triumph, but one of quiet despair. It had been nearly two months since my return from the mountain. I was in my study late one night, a half-dozen histories of the kingdom open on my desk, my mind a tangled mess of timelines and assassination plots from the novel.
I was trying to map out the Void Cult's future movements, trying to recall the exact date of the next major tragedy—the assassination of a promising young mage at the capital. The sheer, overwhelming scale of their conspiracy was threatening to crush me. They weren't just a few fanatics; they were a deeply embedded cancer. Valerius was just one cell, and killing him might not even slow them down.
What am I even doing? The thought was a venomous whisper in my mind. I'm a boy playing at war. I can't stop this.
The stress, the exhaustion, the constant pressure of living a double life finally became too much. The Two-Heart Cadence, my anchor in this chaotic new world, began to stutter. The harmony wavered, the familiar rhythm turning into a discordant, painful throbbing in my chest. A wave of dizziness washed over me, and the room began to spin. My mana circulation went haywire, the power in my veins turning from a steady current into a chaotic, painful storm. It felt like the backlash in the Voidstone Chamber all over again, a searing, internal fire.
I collapsed to the floor, my body seizing, a choked gasp torn from my lungs. Not now, I thought, a wave of pure panic washing over me. Not after all this work. I can't lose control.
But then, Damian's words echoed in my mind. "Stop trying to use it. Just be it."
I had been holding on too tightly, not just to my power, but to everything. To the future, to the plot of the novel, to the crushing responsibility I had placed on my own shoulders. I had been trying to consciously control a process that needed to be instinctual. In my moment of panic, I finally did what I should have done weeks ago. I let go.
I stopped trying to force the rhythm. I stopped fighting the chaos. I simply… surrendered to it. I accepted the pain, the discord, and the raging storm within me, letting it wash over me. And in that moment of absolute surrender, of accepting my own powerlessness against the storm, something shifted.
The two hearts, which had been fighting for dominance, suddenly found a new equilibrium. It wasn't the carefully constructed harmony I had been practicing; it was something deeper, more fundamental. My human heart didn't just beat in the space between the dragon's pulse; it began to beat in perfect, resonant unison with it, the two rhythms locking into a single, unified, impossibly powerful beat.
A wave of pure, clean power washed through me, not as a chaotic flood, but as a deep, oceanic tide. The pain vanished, replaced by a profound sense of peace and strength. My mana circuits, stretched to their absolute limit by the weeks of training and the stress of the moment, suddenly expanded, widening and deepening under the pressure of the new, unified flow. My Aether reserves, the teacup Damian had spoken of, didn't just get bigger. A wall broke. The cup became a barrel.
I lay on the floor for a long time, just breathing, feeling the new, deeper rhythm of my existence. The Two-Heart Cadence was no longer a technique I had to maintain; it was simply the way my body worked.
When I finally pushed myself to my feet, I felt different. The world seemed sharper, more vibrant. The air in the room was a tapestry of scents I could now distinguish. I could feel the steady, powerful aura of my father in his study two floors below, no longer a mountain of pressure, but a strong, steady wind.
I held up my hand and willed a simple light to appear. A sphere of brilliant, blue-white light bloomed in my palm, twice as large and ten times as bright as anything I had been able to create before. It was perfectly stable, perfectly controlled, and it felt as easy as taking a breath.
The breakthrough was complete. I was no longer a novice Adept clinging to a clever trick. I was, in every sense of the word, a true Artisan. And I finally felt strong enough to hunt the serpent in our house.